William Shatner and his daughter both survived stage 4 cancer, he reveals
The 95-year-old Star Trek icon and his daughter Melanie were each diagnosed with stage 4 cancer within about a year of each other. In a new People cover story, they reveal that both are now cancer-free, and that the experience changed how Shatner sees the time he has left.
William Shatner has opened up about a battle he mostly kept private: he and his daughter both faced stage 4 cancer at nearly the same time, and both survived.
The 95-year-old Star Trek actor and his daughter, Melanie Shatner Gretsch, shared their story in a new People cover story. The headline of it, the part that matters most, is that they’re both okay now.
Two stage 4 diagnoses, a year apart
The diagnoses came close together. Melanie, Shatner’s daughter with ex-wife Gloria Rand, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in 2022 at age 60, after finding a lump. She was treated at UCLA Health, where doctors considered her a rare curable case of a cancer that had already advanced.
About a year later, Shatner got his own diagnosis. He noticed a lump near his right ear. One doctor waved it off. A second doctor removed it, and it turned out to be stage 4 melanoma, a serious skin cancer that had spread.
The prognosis was blunt. Shatner has recounted being told that if the treatment didn’t work, he had roughly five months. He went through about two years of treatment.
Both are cancer-free now
Here’s the part worth sitting with. Both of them made it.
“Through the magic of medicine, we’re both cancer-free,” Shatner said. Today he and Melanie each have no evidence of disease and remain in remission. Melanie has described one of the darkest nights, when she called her father convinced she was dying. That call is behind them now.
He’d touched on it before
This isn’t the very first time Shatner has mentioned the melanoma. He spoke about it at a dermatology conference in 2024, and referenced both his and his daughter’s cancers briefly in 2025, though at the time he said he didn’t want to get into it.
What’s new is the full account, told together, with both of them on the other side of it. This People cover story is the first time father and daughter have really laid out what those years were like.
A new perspective, and a podcast
Shatner says coming close to death changed him. It sharpened his attention to his family, he explained, and made him think harder about what he wants to do with the years he has left.
For a man known for his boundless curiosity, the fear he described wasn’t really about dying. It was about running out of time to keep learning, to keep asking questions.
He and Melanie have turned that outlook into something they can share. The two are launching a podcast together, No Time but Now, built around reflecting on life, family, and finding joy in ordinary moments.
Both are well. At 95, Shatner says the scare left him paying closer attention to the people around him and the time still in front of him. The podcast is his and Melanie’s way of talking about exactly that.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
People — the cover story in which Shatner and Melanie Shatner Gretsch detail their diagnoses, treatment, and recovery
ABC News / Good Morning America — the confirmation both are in remission with no evidence of disease, and the No Time but Now podcast
TV Insider / Yahoo — Shatner’s account of the stage 4 melanoma, the two years of treatment, and the family’s role
AOL / Healio — Shatner’s earlier 2024 dermatology-conference and 2025 comments about the diagnoses